Windows Server 2016 is a server operating system developed by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems, developed concurrently with Windows 10. The first early preview version (Technical Preview) became available on October 1, 2014 together with the first technical preview of System Center.Unlike previous Windows Server versions, which were released simultaneously with the client operating system, Windows Server 2016 was released on September 26, 2016 at Microsoft's Ignite conference and became generally available on October 12, 2016

Storage Services: Central Storage QoS Policies; Storage Replicas (storage-agnostic, block-level, volume-based, synchronous and asynchronous replication using SMB3 between servers for disaster recovery). Storage Replica replicates blocks instead of files; files can be in use. It's not multi-master, not one-to-many and not transitive. It periodically replicates snapshots, and the replication direction can be changed.

Microsoft’s Windows Server 2016 is now generally available and rolling out to customers. Presales for Server 2016 started on October 1 and Microsoft always said that customers would get access to the actual bits in mid-October. Now that it’s mid-October and the leaves are falling, the company is living up to this promise.

In addition, System Center 2016, Microsoft’s data center management solution for deploying and managing servers and desktops, has now also hit general availability.

Microsoft is using today’s launch to put the focus on its hybrid cloud efforts and how Windows Server 2016 enables enterprises to run their applications both in their own data centers and in public clouds (including, of course, its own Azure cloud computing platform).

DNS client: Service binding – enhanced support for computers with more than one network interface
DNS Server: DNS policies, new DDS record types (TLSA, SPF, and unknown records), new PowerShell cmdlets and parameters

Microsoft has been reorganized by Satya Nadella, putting the Server and System Center teams together. Previously, the Server team was more closely aligned with the Windows client team. The Azure team is also working closely with the Server team.

In March 2017, Microsoft demonstrated an internal version of Server 2016 running on the ARMv8-A architecture. It was reported that Microsoft was working with Qualcomm Centriq and Cavium ThunderX2 chips. According to James Vincent of The Verge, this decision endangers Intel's dominance of the server CPU market. However, later inquiry from Microsoft revealed that this version of Windows Server is only for internal use and only impacts subscribers of Microsoft Azure service.